A digital media playback device typically includes a handheld device such as an MP3 player. Some MP3 players are implemented as software programs on Personal Computers. Handheld MP3 players have limited memory sizes that can consist of Flash Memory, dynamic RAM memory and rotating CD-ROM memory. However, these types of MP3 players have required that the user/consumer must manage the memory content (also known as playlists) on the MP3 Player.
This manual management of the memory content has restricted the use of these devices only to users/consumers that are computer literate and are able to manage the storage on the various types of memory in the MP3 device. For example in typical MP3 player there may be ‘internal memory’ that is built-in to the device when it is manufactured and Flash Memory (sometimes in the form of Smart Media cards or CompactFlash cards) which is inserted into the device by the user/consumer after a separate purchase. The user/consumer must be cognizant of the various types of memory in the device and the limitations of the capacity of the devices. In addition, the digital media players were envisioned to only handle the playback of music files. However, there are many more types of digital media than music. For example, there is spoken audio that falls in the categories of News, Weather, Sports, Traffic and Entertainment. Thus, it would be desirable to automatically manage all of the memory space for the electronic media files for the consumer/user.
In addition, although there are radios that can connect to computers and that allow for the recording of programs, they require that the consumer/user know the exact time and frequency of the program to record. In addition, these programs require that the consumer/user must manually intervene when the recording is complete to save the recording in a manually specified file name. In order to utilize these recording programs, the consumer/user must gather and manually collect the information about the program schedule, availability and the suitability of a broadcaster in their geographic location.
It is currently possible for a consumer to manually convert recorded sound files (e.g., WAV files that are simple analog to digital encoding of the analog sound signal) into MP3 files (MPEG Level 3—an industry standard compression format). However, it is a difficult and cumbersome manual process to track the newly recorded files and convert them.
It is currently possible to download the MP3 files into a digital media player (software player or hardware player) and play the converted files on the digital media player. However, it is a cumbersome, difficult and manual process to perform all of these steps for a consumer. Hence it would be an advancement of the state of the art if there is a system and method for automatically managing the selection of programs, recording of programs, conversion of programs, downloading of programs to a digital media player and automating the process of keeping the content on the digital media player fresh for the consumer.